Dr. Kirsten Yri

Contact Information

Languages Spoken

English

Academic Background

BMus (UVic), MA, PhD (Stony Brook)

Biography

Dr. Kirsten Yri received her MA and PhD in musicology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook after completing a BMus in Music History and Literature at University of Victoria, and an ARCT in piano performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music. Her dissertation, Medieval Uncloistered: Uses of Medieval Music in Late Twentieth- Century Culture examined the influences, interpretations and reconfigurations of medieval music in late twentieth-century popular music, contemporary concert music, and historically-informed performance. Yri taught at SUNY Stony Brook and the University of Karlstad, Sweden, prior to her appointment at Laurier. Yri is on the graduate faculty at WLU.

Yri has published articles on early music groups including, the New York Pro Musica and the ‘cultural front;’ feminist spirituality in Anonymous 4 and Sequentia; orientalism in Binkley’s Studio der Frühen Musik; and a history of recording Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame. Other research topics have included madwomen in Linda Bouchard’s Black Burned Wood, alienation in Hindemith's Neues vom Tage, and exoticism in alternative rock bands. Her current research projects include a collection of essays on medievalism in 19th and 20th century culture; and music in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Continuing with the theoretical framework of medievalism, Yri is also investigating the music, dance, and poetry in Orff’s Carmina Burana in the context of medievalism under fascism, the New German Dance movement and Lebensreform.

Yri has presented her research at numerous international and national conferences including the American Musicological Society, the Canadian University Music Society, the International Musicological Society, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, and Studies in Medievalism, and remains active in these organizations. In 2012, Yri was the Program Chair for the national conference of the Canadian University Music Society, held at WLU May 31- June 3, 2012.

Yri teaches the music faculty's surveys of 19th and 20th century music, as well as a series of seminar courses in musicology; cross-cultural intersections; music, culture, and technology; music in popular culture; and medievalism. Her courses incorporate critical theories from disciplines such as women’s studies, postcolonialism, literary criticism and cultural studies in an effort to shed light on the role and meaning of music in both contemporary and historical times.